1. Field
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus that compresses image data obtained by shooting and records the image data on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image pickup apparatus such as a digital camera can mount a portable recording medium such as a memory card composed of a semiconductor memory. A shot image can be stored in the memory card. By user operation, image data stored in the memory card is read and an image is displayed on a liquid crystal display unit installed on the camera.
Recently, a digital camera that mounts a hard disk drive (HDD) which is a large-capacity recording medium has been developed. In such a camera, the number of still images that can be recorded and the recording time for a moving image are dramatically increased over conventional digital cameras.
However, the HDD is susceptible to impact, and thus by dropping of the camera, the HDD itself may be damaged or data may be corrupted. Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-346444 discloses a disk apparatus in which when a free-fall condition of a camera is detected, a head is retracted from a disk to protect the head and the optical disk.
When dropping of the apparatus is detected on the ground, a process that is performed just before the dropping is aborted in the aforementioned Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2003-346444. However, there is no description of a process after that. Specifically, there is no description of a process of, after the apparatus is dropped, returning the apparatus to an operation state before the dropping.